If you are a parent/guardian who may occasionally bring your child(ren) into the department, or your role in the department means you may have work experience students, or are involved with other activities that involved young people or children entering the building, please refer to the details below and the full university policy on the safety of young people and children.

Children visiting as part of an event or outreach activity

Young people and children may visit the department as part of an organised event or work in which case their activities are managed in accordance with the events safety organisation process.

Children in the department on work experience

On occasion young people (between the ages of 16 and 18) may spend short periods of time (e.g. one week) on a work experience placement within the department. Such work experience will be under the supervision of academics or administrative staff and the individual will be given an induction to the department and building when they begin. Such work experience is usually a formal arrangement between the department and a school and the school will have a formal risk assessment process. Please inform the Head of Administration and Finance or the Departmental Safety Officer if you are considering taking someone on for a work experience placement. All such placements must be approved by the department.

Children of members of the department

Children are very welcome at departmental social events (e.g. Summer party, Summer Cricket Match, Christmas Party).

Children of members of the department are also occasionally brought into University departments, perhaps during brief social visits or, exceptionally, in emergency situations where staff, or students, have difficulties with their normal child-care provision. The university policy states that children under the minimum school leaving age (usually 16) should only be allowed in departments with the permission of the head of department or his/her authorised deputy, for as short a time as possible and only as the last resort when all other options for childcare (such as taking emergency domestic leave or annual leave) have been exhausted. Given the very low risk environment of the department, and the department's good practice aim to be family friendly, this head of department permission is implicitly provided for members subject to common sense pragmatic parental oversight.

Children must always be accompanied while on University premises and on no account should they be permitted unsupervised access even to low risk areas. Parents cannot delegate this responsibility.

Please contact us for feedback and comments about this page. Last update on 11 October 2017 - 10:29.